“Why shouldn't this happen? I have to rid myself of this last land mine, the unlived life.”
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Famous Jim Harrison Quotes
“It's up to poets to revive the gods.”
Source: Dead Man's Float
Source: After Ikkyu & Other Poems
“You don't have to become what you already are, which is a relief.”
Source: In Search of Small Gods
“Short things are short all over and long things are long all over.”
Source: Conversations with Jim Harrison
Source: True North
“Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.”
“I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.”
“Life is an honor, albeit anonymously delivered.”
Source: In Search of Small Gods
“All artists as a type seem to suffer a great deal, but then so do miners.”
Source: The Road Home
“When we die we are only stories in the minds of others, I thought”
Source: The Road Home
“I'd rather get a brain tumor than go back to teaching.”
Source: The English Major: A Novel
Source: Dalva
Source: The English Major: A Novel
“Naturally we would prefer seven epiphanies a day and an earth not so apparently devoid of angels.”
Source: Letters to Yesenin
“Yeah, but now suddenly - you know, universities are notoriously market oriented, too.”
Source: Conversations with Jim Harrison
Source: True North
Source: Off to the Side: A Memoir
“I had let my digust with teaching ruin my love of literature.”
“Poetry at its best is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak.”
Source: Just Before Dark
“Every day I wonder how many things I am dead wrong about. -- True North”
Source: True North
Source: Wolf
“The days are stacked against what we think we are.”
Source: The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems
“It is easy to forget that in the main we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs.”
Source: The Road Home
Source: Returning to Earth
“Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.”
Source: Conversations with Jim Harrison
“A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.”